AGI decreases bounce rates by 15.6%

''We're doing something that's super important. How do we feed the planet, how do we take care of people?''

Optimizely sat down with David Postill, Senior Vice President Marketing & Customer Experience at AGI.

He begins by telling us about the initiation of AGI. ''Well, we describe ourselves as a food infrastructure company. So, we started in the agricultural equipment business in Western Canada, selling one piece of equipment in one small region. In the grain farming business, you have a whole pile of what are called short line pieces of equipment; augers, conveyors, storage bins, fans, heaters, silos. And so, the company started by consolidating those pieces of equipment and offering it as a total solution. And that allowed us to grow from being just exclusively a farm agricultural supplier of equipment to a broader food infrastructure''.

AGI are the leading grain handling business, often recognized as the flagship equipment manufacturers in the global agriculture industry. Their products operate across 6 continents and in turn, service millions of end-users.

Their customers consist of farm businesses, individual farmers who buy equipment through dealers or direct, all the way to large engineering and procurement operators. This diverse mix means there is never a single customer view - a challenge AGI are proactively responding to.

Serving resonating products and services according to geography

With the various markets AGI operate, we asked David whether there was a stark difference in offering. He tells us, ''North America [is] very different from how we go to market in Brazil or South America. Very different from how we go to market in the Middle East or Europe, for that matter. Products, offerings, positionings, our branding even, is very different geography to geography''.

AGI relied on a non-coherent, complex infastructure to serve global markets digitally. Their legacy infrastructure comprised of;

• 42 different unique web properties
• 5 languages
• 16 different software platforms,
• Confused piping
• CMS systems that weren't all knitted together

As AGI grew, they shifted their focus on marrying all digital web properties on to one, seamless platform that would enhance their proposition.

On his mission, David explains, ''I was brought in three years ago to take what they had and make it modern digital, global, and efficient. So it's one of the reasons we landed on working with Optimizely''.

Optimizely Content Cloud is the robust, scalable solution AGI rely upon today. Sitting on Microsoft Azure, Content Cloud enables AGI to quickly create powerful digital experiences in every territory they operate. Instead of a disparate, complex web of digital software solutions, Optimizely delivers content and personalization on one platform.

David describes Optimizely as a powerful, tactical tool that is, ''super flexible, super customizable, but in a very easy way. You've got great templates. We've been able to build up cool and flexible customizations. It's a very user-friendly experience. I also think that you have exactly the right functionality for us in well-constructed modules that we can add as we grow over time''.

When it comes to the strategic steps David and AGI have undertaken to proportion the right experiences to different markets we hear that AGI, ''provide a platform for seed, for fertilizer, for grain, for feed and then for food'', he mentions. ''Each of those platforms have their own unique demands, their own customer buying journeys, their own marketing challenges that are also slice and dice by geography around the world''. David then describes how their digital platform performs to create an eco-system for these channels. ''We have to build marketing solutions, web platforms that on one hand work with a dealer channel in North America, on the other hand work directly with end users or growers in Europe. And the expectation for a tool to be highly flexible, easily customizable, content driven is paramount to our success''.

Feeeding the appetite of digital farmers

When talking about customer experience, David shares, ''I think a good customer experience, obviously, begins by just understanding what's important to our customers. And that's more than just clicks and links as to what's going on in their lives. In the food production industry, there is a ton of pressure from sustainability point of view, from an environmental point of view, from a use of resources point of view. In different parts of the world they're having a different experiences right now in terms of what's important to them.''

As David puts it, Optimizely is helping AGI, ''with the rollout of the website we were able to go see, and this is what it's supposed to look like, and this is how we should go to market''.